The Next Fight
by thag-the-upset
Summary: "Sequel" to Fall of the OneWinged Angel. How far will Cloud go to reunite with the woman he loves?


THE NEXT FIGHT  
  
Thag: Leon, would you please read the disclaimer for us?  
  
Leon: . . . Whatever.  
  
Thag: Typical. Fine, if you don't everyone will call you "Squall" in ALL my fanfics.  
  
"Squall": (Narrows his eyes) You wouldn't dare . . .  
  
Thag: (Brandishing a massive club) Try me.  
  
"Squall": . . . Fine. He doesn't own anyone in Kingdom Hearts.  
  
Thag: Thank you Leon.  
  
Leon: . . . Whatever.  
  
A/N: WOW! People actually like my stories! Well, this is a "sequel" to my second story: "Fall of the OneWinged Angel". Although it's rated R and not REALLY necessary to understand this fic, it's action packed and you'd make me a lot less upset if you read and review it too. Both fics are form Cloud's POV. Okay, I've stalled long enough, ON WITH THE STORY!  
  
  
  
"AERITH!" I cried sitting up, but the sharp pain in my chest forced me back down.  
  
"Goofy! Hold him down!" a slightly unintelligible voice growled. Two massive, powerful hands pinned my shoulders down. A white - feathered head poked into my still-blurry vision. "You crazy little . . ." Donald's voice descended into a string of indistinguishable insults. I blinked as I caught my breath.  
  
"What, what happened?" I managed to wheeze out.  
  
His partner being too busy muttering how stupid I was to answer, Goofy replied. "You just tore that spooky fella to bits. Gawrsh I've never seen a fight like that before!" His hands clamped down a bit harder, and for the first time I could ever recall, he scowled with a bit of anger. "You also hurt Sora pretty bad . . ."  
  
"Oh god." It all came flooding back, my last battle with Sephiroth, my body pumping with rage.  
  
My knocking the Keyblade master into the wall.  
  
"Oh god." I repeated, "Is he okay?"  
  
"He'll be fine, no thanks to you!" Donald hollered as he poked my wounds with his staff. "You knocked him unconscious, broke a few ribs, and he'll probably have a bruise on his stomach for a week!"  
  
"Not to mention breaking every single rule of the coliseum, Cloud!" A furious voice bellowed. "You're lucky Hercules thinks you're a good sparring partner, or I'd chuck you clear outta my stadium for good personally!"  
  
"Take it easy Phil," Goofy said. "He's still recovering. Besides, remember your blood pressure."  
  
The satyr stormed of, muttering to himself. "I'm sorry guys," I cried through the pain, "but that. . . MONSTER stole the one most precious thing in my whole life. The one person I ever really loved."  
  
"Aerith?" a young voice said to my right.  
  
"Sora!" In a flash his compatriots flew to the young boy's side. "You shouldn't be up yet!" Donald protested.  
  
The kid ignored his friends, "Aeirth, she's the missing person you're looking for?"  
  
I sighed, even though it hurt, "She's the one I sold my soul to Hades to find. And I'd give more just to see her again." Before I knew it, I was babbling on about my story. The war on Shinra, my old friends, the Weapons, Sephiroth, Hades, everything. "Funny," I whispered once I was finished, "I never was one to talk about my past. But I think you deserve at least that much."  
  
Sora walked up to my side, still clutching the spot where I hit him with the blunt side of my Buster Sword. He looked at me for a few seconds before I felt so uncomfortable I had to turn the other way. "He's telling the truth." He said quietly. My head snapped back to his face. "She is alive."  
  
Ignoring the pain I leapt up and grabbed his shoulders "This isn't funny kid! Is she really?" I quickly grew dizzy from my sudden movements, but I heard his answer before the darkness closed in again.  
  
"She's okay, in a place called Traverse Town."  
  
  
  
"Uhhh." I groaned as I came to, bitter about how I was sore all over.  
  
"So you're up!" An obnoxiously cheery voice greeted me. Before I could say a thing, someone pounced onto a rest bed I must've been moved to and wrapped their arms around me. "You are such a jerk! I've been waiting for you to get up for like, hours!"  
  
I blinked my eyes until they focused on a teenage girl's grinning face. "Yuffie? I, I gotta be dreaming."  
  
"Well that's sweet of you, but you're just not my type." The ninja joked.  
  
I shook my head and groaned, "What are you doing here?"  
  
She looked serious for the first time I could remember and let go of me. "Sora came by and told me an interesting story." I looked at her for a moment. "No, we didn't tell your GIRLFRIEND!" she scolded. "What in the world happened to you? After Holy obliterated the meteor, where'd you go?" I was about to tell her, but she stopped me, "No, it's hypothetical, I'm talking now. You walked off with Vincent back to Nibelheim, and found yourself in a similar situation to his." She paused while feeling the cape's texture. "Stole his clothes and went off on your own to find Aerith without telling anybody. We were worried."  
  
She was silent for a moment and I could've sworn she was fighting back tears. I couldn't believe it, Yuffie was almost crying. Yuffie, the most carefree person I've ever encountered! "We went down into the mansion," I began. "As I was about to seal up Vincent's coffin again, he handed me his cape and claw. He said it was all symbolic. The cape was about going through any darkness to find your love, and the claw was your determination to fight back out with her. As I was about to leave, the Hades Materia I was carrying shattered, and there stood a new Hades. Black robes, gray skin and blue hair of flame. He told me he knew what I was looking for, and would give it to me for one last hit. . ." I stopped, unable to continue.  
  
"I know," the now-composed ninja replied, "Sora told me. So, when you didn't come back, we all went our different ways to find you. Cid tinkered with the Highwind and decided to dive in into the Lifestream. I made the mistake of stowing away onboard." She grabbed her stomach for emphasis. "He still can't fly smoothly to save his life."  
  
I couldn't help but chuckle, I was glad to see Yuffie back to her old self. She continued, "We met a new friend who fights with a gun/sword type thing. His name's Leon, he's pretty cute. Turns out he had met Aerith weeks ago." I gasped but if she heard me she ignored it. "So we've been fighting off these Heartless things as a team along with Sora, though he sees more action than us."  
  
I was quiet for a moment while I thought this over. "C'mon, we're all relocating to guard the place where the Heartless originated from. It's a bitchin' castle called 'Hallow Bastion'." She shot me a sidelong glare "SHE will be there."  
  
I nearly jumped up and started screaming at her for us to go already, but a dark thought kept me in bed. "I can't," I finally said. Before she could retort I sat up and let out a sorrowful yell as my demon's wing tore through my shoulder. She screamed at the sudden sight. It felt like my own sword cutting through my soul. "I've changed. To survive Hades' training, to get stronger, to see Aerith; I let him do THIS!" I fell back down into my bed and began to cry.  
  
Yuffie's slender hand rested on the already-healing scar my wing had made. "She won't care. I don't care. You just startled me is all." She tried to force on a smile, "I still know you're the same, moody ex-SOLDIER we all know and love." I turned away, suddenly disgusted with myself. I heard her walk to the door and open it. "I'll leave a simple Gummi Ship on top of the left-hand Statue outside."  
  
"Yuffie," I called after her. "My wallet?"  
  
She tossed me my munny sack without even turning, "Hey, I was just testing you!"  
  
  
  
  
  
I've been hiding in the shadows of the castle for about a day now, and I still don't know what to do. With everyone searching the castle for clues on how to stop the heartless, I've been forced to stay in the center chamber, gazing at the portal to darkness. I saw her today. I was wandering about, familiarizing myself with the layout of the castle. I turned a corner and there she was, studying a large statue. My eyes teared over immediately. She was alive, she was here, she was REAL. No tormented dream or heartbreaking memory, but her in the flesh. I felt my heart tear asunder and my knees buckled, forcing me to flee in tears before she could find me.  
  
I had come back to the Heart Chamber to find a quartet of heartless dragging what looked like a black keyblade into the portal. In my rage at myself I destroyed them in a flash. I then picked up the weapon. "A key," I read the inscription. "To unlock the potential of one's heart. To free it from the bonds holding their true feelings back. The Keyblade, Oblivion." To free one's heart? "So what am I?" I whispered. "A heart of darkness being held by the laws of what's right, or a heart consumed by darkness and misery, yet surviving by the small light that is it's own?"  
  
I've been contemplating it for some time, no closer to an answer. If I use it, I can free myself. I can become the person I once was, the man she loved. However, it could destroy me. Turn me into a heartless more powerful than any we've encountered, by killing off what little human was left in me. "But," I said aloud as I lifted the weapon. "What is the point of me staying how I am if I cannot even bear for her to see me?" And without a second thought, I leapt into the portal and thrust the blade into my chest.  
  
I went limb and numb, unable to feel even the clothes I was wearing. Everything was dark and empty. No feeling, smell, sound, sense of gravity, anything. It wasn't that I couldn't move, but that there was nothing TO move. I couldn't detect any part of my body at all, like there was nothing there but my very soul. Suddenly, I was back in my body, in a large room whose floor and walls were flowing clouds of red, green, yellow and blue. The effect made it nearly impossible to determine the size of the room. A black fog materialized a few feet away from me, slowly twisting, taking human form.  
  
"Puppet. . ."  
  
My muscles tensed and I drew my sword in reflex.  
  
"Poor, lost puppet. . ." The fog fell away and there he stood, my mortal enemy. "So desperately trying to change what he's become." He walked up to me and cupped my cheek. I knocked his arm away, only to find his other fist in my chest. "Yes. A lost soul bound by his hatred of another. We truly are the same."  
  
I swung my blade, but he had already swept behind me. A swift kick sent me tumbling forward. "It's all right, let your full fury loose. No more games, no running. Our last dance, and I won't even use the Masamune." My only answer was a low, sweeping swing. He effortlessly hopped the sword and landed with the heel of his foot on my back. "You're still too slow," he taunted. "Don't you see this is it? Our greatest battle. No bodies, no fatigue, just two lost souls with nothing to prove." He stepped off and lifted my head to face him, "Except to each other."  
  
A quick left uppercut caught him off-guard, but he instantly punted my nose in reply. "An ultimate battle, to earn the soul of the weaker one to do with as the winner may please." He dashed up to face me, "Forever. . ."  
  
I dragged the buster sword along the floor in a large, upward cut. Yet as my edge came to his throat, I stopped.  
  
He hadn't even flinched. "What's wrong? I can be yours to hurt, battle and slay for ETERNITY!" His face seemed to almost look, concerned. "Isn't that what you want?"  
  
The Buster Sword trembled in my hands. Yes! My brain screamed. Yes, make him feel even a fraction of the pain and suffering he's caused you. My mind's eye flashed into countless punishments, wounds and tortures I could inflict on him. Yes, I want to make him pay! He'll pay for what he did to. . .  
  
"Aerith. . ."  
  
I breathed deeply and slowly placed the sword away upon my back. "No Sephiroth," I calmly replied. "This isn't what I want. I wanted to break free of my feelings of darkness. Not dwell on them and make them stronger.." I turned and walked towards the spot where all the flowing clouds converged. "Besides," I chuckled, "I've proved enough, and you're just not worth it."  
  
"FOOL!" He bellowed form behind me. "My soul still burns, and if you leave now, I will continue to seek you out across infinite worlds and I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER!"  
  
I stopped and turned back to face him, a rage and fury I've never seen in his eyes shone like twin thunderstorms. "Then may Heaven help you," I said with a grin. "For I have the love of the friends who care for me. And it makes me more powerful than you could ever imagine."  
  
Then again, everything went black.  
  
  
  
" You durn kid, WAKE UP!"  
  
An awfully surly voice and a sharp kick to the ribs woke me up. My eyes snapped open to find an aging blond man with a bit of straw between his lips. "Cid?"  
  
"You've made us all so darn sad and worried jus' dissapearin' like that!" He roughly yanked me up by my collar. "And what's this BS I hear from Yuffie about you being too afraid to see Aerith?"  
  
I closed my eyes and focused. Then with a straining grunt I summoned all the dark power within me.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
"What the hey is wrong with you?" the 'Captain' asked.  
  
For the first time in a long time, I truly smiled openly with joy. "Nothing," I replied while smashing Oblivion with my blade. "Nothing at all."  
  
"Good," Cid grumbled as he dragged me into another room. "Cause you have some explaining to do!"  
  
Across from me was Yuffie standing beside Aerith. After so long there she was the one I had gone though so much to find. There was so much I had dreamed of doing, of saying at this very time. But all I could muster was a choked-back, "Aer. . ." I hung my head, feeling pretty stupid.  
  
She then bent down a bit so she could look me in the eye. "Cloud," her glorious voice rang with a giggle. "Does Vincent know you stole his clothes?"  
  
We all burst into laughter and I held her close. "Aer," I said again. "I'm Never going to lose you again."  
  
THE END  
  
  
  
A/N: Whoo! That turned out just a bit longer than I had intended, sorry about that. Anyways please review my stories so that I may return the favor. Constructive critisism is okay, but no flames please, as they will be duly ignored. Thanks for wasting your time to support my delusion that I can actually write something. LOVE & PEACE! 


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